Google may be keeping quiet on when the Google TV platform will be updated to the Jelly Bean operating system, but developers are already hard at work.

Last week, reports suggested that the tech giant was gearing up to phase out the Google TV brand in favor of "Android TV" -- a better synchronisation of Android applications, software, and smart televisions from a brand perspective.

Three years after launching Google TV, the average smart television set already possesses many of the mod cons Google TV offers, and so bringing Android and Chrome to sets under a more specific brand makes sense. In addition, it is expected that merging the sectors will result in rapid updates to the TV operating system, which is the facet developers are most interested in.

When these reports surfaced, GTV Hacker CJ Heres posted his own take on Google+ and Twitter: "Android TV? We already did it."

The image above shows a hacked ROM running on a Sony NSZGS7 Google TV set. In addition, Heres posted the open source code for LG's Google TV devices -- which now uses Linux 3.4.5, the system Jelly Bean is based on. Jelly Bean is slated to be the next Google TV platform update, but no timeframe has been announced.

Heres admits the Android-only system hack -- with software pulled from a Chinese Android device -- is buggy and rough due to the need to "find a box with the same SOC, pulling off the software and hacking all of the crypto to get it to load on another box," but it does have NKD support and is able to run XBMC -- except when video playback is attempted.

Heres hopes that the upcoming update will make this type of hack unnecessary -- but has proved that other options are available if Google changes its mind, or the update is later than expected.

Charlie Osborne, a medical anthropologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, freelance photographer and former teacher.
She has spent years travelling and working across Europe and the Middle East as a teacher, and has been involved in the running of businesses ranging from media and events to B2B sales. Charli...
Full Bio